Professional Bio
Dr. Rod Moten is a software professional with over 25 years of experience as a college professor, trainer, software engineer, and researcher. Rod began his career as an assistant professor of computer science at Colgate University in 1996. He was the first black assistant professor in the Natural Science division at Colgate University since its founding in 1819. During his sabbatical, he worked as a visiting assistant professor at RPI in Troy, NY and a research fellow at ARL in Aberdeen, MD. Rod taught several courses in computer science, but his favorites were operating systems, compilers, and the theory of programming languages. While teaching these courses, Rod developed a method to implement high quality software fast. The method is based on utilizing the techniques and algorithms for implementing operating systems and programming languages in ordinary software applications. Rod has used this method throughout his career in industry
In 2003, Rod made the hard decision to leave academia to pursue his desire to work in industry. His first position in industry was as a trainer at Bloomberg LP where he taught advance computer science concepts to new hires. As a trainer, Rod inspired others to use their knowledge of operating systems and programming language implementation to develop high-quality software solutions. After two years, Rod transitioned as trainer to work as a senior technologist to help Bloomberg create a cutting-edge search engine for Bloomberg News. Rod’s role was to help develop an ontology and implement an ontological search engine that used the ontology. Rod’s work was so successful that he was able to publish some of his ideas in the Proceedings of the 4th International World Wide Web Conference. Rod also helped Bloomberg launch into the new era of Web services by being a key contributor on Bloomberg’s first Web service offering.
In 2008, Rod relocated to Delaware and joined a small start-up in Philadelphia that implemented novel algorithms for supply chain management created by the world-renowned professor at Wharton, Dr. Morris Cohen. Rod returned to the finance industry during a short stint at Citigroup as a solutions architect and then transitioned his career to military intelligence in 2010.
Rod’s work in military intelligence began as a principal engineer at Sotera Defense. As a principal engineer, Rod implemented a cutting-edge framework that allowed small devices, such as smart phones, handheld devices, and heads up displays, to interoperate with military intelligent systems operating on Big Data platforms. Rod published his accomplishments at the prestigious National Symposium on Sensor and Data Fusion (NSSDF). Rod left Sotera after two years to work as a Chief Scientist first at ProArc and later at Datanova Scientific. While at these firms Rod developed innovative ways to protect classified information in software systems that are used in unclassified and classified environments. Rod published his work at NSSDF as well as presented at the First Accumulo Summit. Rod also made contributions in the area of knowledge representation which were published in the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops and the Workshop on Semantic Technologies for Intelligence, Defense, and Security. Rod also won two Small Business Innovation Research awards while working at Datanova Scientific. Rod ended his career in military intelligence working for himself at I4HQ where he developed a prototype system using AI for the US Army’s multi-year initiative to use a common platform for intelligence and mission command computing systems. He also continued his work in knowledge representation which he presented and published at the Workshop on Semantic Technologies for Intelligence, Defense, and Security.
Rod returned to the finance industry in 2018 as VP of Architecture at JP Morgan Chase (JPMC). As a VP of Architecture, Rod has several accomplishes. He used his keen understanding of programming language to improve the performance and reduce the maintenance cost of two JPMC proprietary domain-specific languages. He developed a practical methodology for tech managers to create cloud-native architectures, project plans, and budgets for transitioning legacy software to the cloud. In 2021, Rod became a VP of Model Development where he serves as a member of JPMC’s Wholesale Credit Risk Quantitative Research team. In addition, Rod worked part-time as an adjunct associate professor in computer science at Delaware State University teaching software engineering as part of an JPMC outreach program. In 2023, Rod was promoted to Director of Quant Modeling. Rod serves as an architect and lead developer of a start-of-the-art platform for forecasting capitalization ratios. Rod also contributes to the development and implementation of forecasting models.
Rod has a PhD in computer science from Cornell University and a BS from Stonybrook University. He has done community service work by serving as a board of director of Sandy Cove Ministries in Maryland, as a youth minister working specifically with gang members in New York, as the director of men’s ministry at a church in Pennsylvania, and as the founder of the Elkton Prayer Center in Maryland.
Rod has been married to his wife, Natacha, since 1994 and they have 5 children together.